Hailing from Reykjavík, the heart of Iceland’s currently hot black metal scene, DRAUGSÓL are a unique proposition amongst their distinguished stylistic countrymen. While those same contemporaries take an austere and varyingly atmospheric approach to orthodox black metal, DRAUGSÓL break from the norm with a sound that’s pronounceably more kaleidoscopic and even a bit celebratory. But let it be known that Volaða Land is not “fun” music or partytime “black metal” or anything falling under the rubric of rock ‘n’ roll; rather, there is a strive toward the truly EPIC, a search for superiority of a world apart, a roaming of the hinterlands well beyond the borders of the imagination.

At the album’s emotional center is an existential crisis in a seemingly futile and careless world, the demented self-attempts to claw one’s way towards meaning and the enlightenment of self. Succumb to the void or be the maker of your own purpose: the process of a single person’s mental anguish and the hopelessness of being are writ large across DRAUGSÓL’s opening statement. Volaða Land starts with the uprising, a search for self-empowerment and purpose. The struggle to keep one’s humanity continues as the album progresses, dealing with the mental anguish of being and the absurdity of life in a seemingly careless existence and the struggle in a cruel world. The delusional individual who is the creator and destroyer of his own being/existence rises forth as the record continues, with the realization that to find meaning and purpose is one’s own responsibility. Will you rise to the occasion or will you fade disgracefully?

The world may change, values and morality may fluctuate, yet everything stays the same. DRAUGSÓL fight against this with Volaða Land, knowing that the human being has to – and will always have to – deal with the primal fear of the unknown. Dive deeply into their debut album, for there is nothing certain but the uncertain. Let there be no hope of pardon, nothing but the certainty of death…